“We stick our graphics where the sun don’t shine” – Infocom ad from the 1980′s.
Infocom’s Interactive Fiction
Back in the day, they were only referred to as “text adventures.” These days fans call them interactive fiction. I loved those games back when I was an early teenager. I have very fond memories of solving the snake head puzzle in Zork II all by myself – no hints or clues used!
Over the years, I’ve collected legal copies of all the Infocom games (only in digital form). I have a copy of ‘Lost Treasures of Infocom’ volumes 1 and 2, ‘Masterpieces of Infocom’, the 5 collections: Adventure, Comedy, Mystery, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy, and the Zork Anthology. I bought them all out of a sense of fond nostalgia. But I haven’t really played them all that much.
Playing and finishing all the Infocom games
I’m hoping to start a little personal gaming project/quest. I’d like to play and finish all the Infocom text games. In order to preserve the wonder of playing these games, I’m going to play them using only the materials that would have been available to me in the 1980′s when I was originally playing these games. That would mean no internet helps, but it will allow me to use Infocom maps that were available for purchase (I have all of those) plus the Invisiclues (which can be had in z-machine form). Between those helps, I should be able to finish the games.
My platform of choice is the Zoom interpreter running on a Mac. I’ll be playing the games in the order that they were originally published, starting with Zork I. I have no idea how much time I’ll be able to put into this project, nor do I know how long I’ll stick to it before my attention wanders to another project. But as I finish games, I’ll post a review of sorts here.
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